Between hangovers and overhangs: Dru North Face

Before Pierre Allain and Raymond Leininger climbed the north face of the Dru for the first time, their training was on the boulders of Fontainebleau. My plan was to copy their approach

Cyrill on the summit of Petit Dru.

With this in mind, evenings were spent in the forest, doing circuits and trying to become a "Bleausard". My partner in crime was also trying to emulate climbers from the past, in particular Catherine Destivelle with considerable success.

The young CD

Rubis sur l'Ongle

As the time to apply our training to the real thing came, my partner chose to go to the seaside, but Cyrill, who is almost as young, was keen to give it a shot. After meeting in Chamonix and taking the train up the Mer de Glace we thought we would soon be lounging at the base of the wall. However, we used the approach notes that were so old that they could have been from the first ascent. Hence they were not up to date with the level of glacier retreat as well as other terrain changes that have completely modified the approach. Aways well-connected, Cyrill made a couple of calls to our friends who have been up there and we soon learned that one now needs to climb four pitches out of the glacier to get to the balcony that leads to the base of the wall.

The Verte and the Drus as taken while skiing in spring. The big snowfield that defines the niche is well visible

The new approach so you don't end up spending hours looking for non-existent ladders as we did.

With the day drawing to a close, we managed to reach the bivy site and enjoy a comfortable night in our tent with loads of food and drinks. Our hope was to do the route in a day and be back at the tent the following evening. We would soon learn that one should do more research with such a plan.

Having woken up early, we then spent a few hours deciding where exactly to start. On one hand, we wanted to get going but on the other, we heard quite a few stories of people struggling with route-finding on the face, so we took our time, and eventually found the right start. Once on the wall, the going was good, we were simul-climbing a lot, with a beautiful terrain and good-quality granite making us smile. We belayed on a few steeper pitches, which were thoroughly enjoyable and allowed us to put some of our rock climbing skills into use. Only a weird chimney slowed us down a bit, where I even decided to haul our bags next to it to make the climbing more fun.

First Pitch

About to haul the second bag.

The shortcomings of our preparation soon came to the surface though. At one point our topo said that only "a few pitches to the ridge" were left, but it was clear we still had loads to go. So we ended up meandering left and right on some spectacular terrain. By the time we reached the famous Madonna on the Petit Dru, the sunset was in full swing. We still had some way to get to the Grand Dru and then a rather long descend on the south side, so we decided to settle in for the night.

Looking after Chamonix

We laid down our ropes and bags on the ground and got into the thin bivybag. Fortunately, at that time Cyrill has not yet started working on his posture, so he was great to spoon with. Moreover, he shared some substance that made me think I'm on the Karakoram highway and fell asleep rather quickly.

Drifting like Vernon Subutex

The following morning we hung around until the sun warmed us up and then resumed the ordeal. Some pleasant climbing later we crossed the Grand Dru and commenced the abseiling. It is typically quite a tedious undertaking, but we were lucky to meet Adam and Richard from Slovak Tatras, who climbed the American direct the day before and also had to bivy on the mountain. With four ropes and the massively better topo they had, all four of us whizzed down the face and kept the banter going all the way. As we got down to Charpoua we even got treated with an excellent lunch by Sarah in Charpoua, which made the slog down to Chamonix substantially more bearable!